Igor Sutyagin is odd man out in spy swap deal

After 11 years in a Russian prison, a researcher who always maintained he was not guilty of espionage was suddenly a free man. Now exiled in London and separated from his family, he wonders what the future holds

Igor Sutyagin was shovelling cinders on to a path in his prison compound in Russia's Arctic north early last month when he was told suddenly and without explanation that he should prepare to leave. Shortly afterwards he was handcuffed and put under guard on a flight to Moscow. It was only in the capital's Lefortovo prison that he heard of several other prisoners in the same position and understood that something unusual was up. "You never get any explanation why you are transported anywhere," Sutyagin shrugs. "You are just a prisoner."

Eleven years behind bars on charges of espionage were coming to an abrupt end as the researcher was catapulted into the biggest spy swap of the post-cold war era. Eleven Russian "sleeper" agents in the US were exchanged for four jailed Russians: the three other men who flew with Sutyagin to Vienna on 9 July were apparently bona fide spies. Sutyagin insists – and others, including the US government, concur – that he was the odd one out, an innocent pawn in a murky game that ended at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire.

Now staying with friends in London, Sutyagin faces deep uncertainty about his future: when will he be reunited with his wife Irinia, daughters Oksana and Anastasia, his parents and brother? Is there life for him after prison in his homeland? Will he be able to get a job there? "I am like Solzhenitsyn," he says. "I want to be be free in my own country."Sutyagin, 45, is a short, intense man with thinning hair, whose powerful intelligence shines through his heavily accented English as he occasionally gropes for the right word. His new clothes – a plaid shirt and baggy trousers – are too big for his frame. He is breaking an enforced silence that lasted a quarter of his entire life, testing the waters in his first interview with a British newspaper.

Academic promise

A child of the Soviet Union, Sutyagin was raised in the frozen depths of the cold war and reached maturity as Leonid Brezhnev was replaced by Yuri Andropov, the former KGB chief, and Margaret Thatcher was allowing Ronald Reagan to deploy cruise missiles on Greenham Common. He showed early academic promise, studying physics at Moscow state university, and later becoming an expert on strategic and military issues at the prestigious Institute for the Study of the US and Canada where he worked on the Conventional Forces Europe treaty and wrote several chapters of a highly regarded book on Russia's nuclear arsenal. But Sutyagin's real expertise was on the US and Nato, not Russia itself. "It was necessary to understand what was going on on the Russian side but I never had – and I didn't need – any security clearance," he says. "We only dealt with open sources, not intelligence material."

In 1998, at a conference in Birmingham he was introduced to a British company called Alternative Futures which retained him for $1,000 a month to write reports for them. Sutyagin insists he was not being naive. "I was born in the Soviet Union and grew up there. We were educated to be suspicious of foreigners. But the intention was to provide information on the investment climate in Russia." Russia's security service, the FSB, took a different view and arrested him in October 1999, claiming the UK company was a front for the CIA. "They tried to prove that it was an exchange of information, but that was not the main purpose. It was intended to illustrate trends to prove that it was secure to invest in Russia."

Sutyagin believes the spooks had their own sinister motives. "It could have been part of an attempt by the FSB to save itself in the face of a threat by [President Boris] Yeltsin to cut its size. Specialists always want to prove their value. It's hard to be a counter-intelligence officer and never catch a spy." It appals him still that he was convicted for passing on information that was publicly available. To underline the point he brandishes his sources: yellowing newspaper clippings quoting two much-decorated generals giving press conferences about military matters. "The FSB wanted to legalise my stay behind bars," he says bitterly. "I received 15 years in prison for these two gentleman." Another exhibit is a 1998 Washington Post article with a heavily underlined passage about weaknesses in Russia's air defence radar system. Even the prison administration, he laughs, had doubts about his guilt, which made him an interesting and unusual inmate in grim places where nothing much of interest ever happens.

• This article was amended on 18 August 2010. The original sited Brize Norton in Wiltshire. This has been corrected.

Penal colony

Life in captivity was tough, especially a three-month spell in solitary confinement in the dreaded Arkhangelsk penal colony. But there were some redeeming features such as working on a newspaper and teaching English to a security chief. "The worst thing for me was that I was unable to spare my family the difficulties they went through," he says. He wrote them thousands of letters to stay in touch and to soften the isolation and separation.

If there is one message he wants to put across now it is that public pressure can help. Adopted as a political prisoner by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, he received thousands of cards and letters of support – a tiny sample jammed into a tatty brown envelope bearing the address of Russia's federal prisons service. "Take heart from knowing you are not forgotten," says a typical one sent from the Netherlands. "Do not lose hope."Sutyagin was required to sign a document admitting his guilt before his release but he complains he has nothing to prove he has been pardoned. "Psychologically, it's important for me to go home to where my family is. I will go home. But I need to understand what is going on in Russia. I need to know if it's really safe." Even now he still does not know exactly why he was freed. According to one theory he was thrown into the package to bulk out the spy swap deal ,to make it less unequal. "I was released because of the agreement between Obama and Medvedev," he says. "But I think it really happened because of the great public interest in my case. The lesson is to continue pressing and not to forget those behind bars.

How he was released

The chain of events which brought Igor Sutyagin to the UK was set in motion in June when FBI agents swooped on 10 "sleeper agents" who were charged with belonging to an espionage ring run by the Russian intelligence service, including the photogenic redhead Anna Chapman. Charges against them included money-laundering and working for a foreign government without registering with the US authorities, but the agents appeared to have achieved little in during their years in America. Photogenic redhead Anna Chapman was the most talked about of the 10 Russian spies rounded up by the FBI in July and swapped for four men being held for espionage in Russia. Chapman and the other "illegals" – sleeper agents without diplomatic cover – seem to have done little to harm American national security. On 9 July they were flown via Vienna for debriefing in Moscow, while four men being held for espionage in Russia boarded planes to the UK and US. Igor Sutyagin was accompanied by Sergei Skripal, a former army colonel convicted of revealing the identities of Russian agents in Europe. He was said to have been paid $100,000 by MI6 and was sentenced to 13 years in jail. It is assumed he is now being given a new identity. The two who went to the US were Alexander Zaporozhsky, a KGB colonel whose information unmasked traitors inside the CIA and FBI; and Gennady Vasilenjko, a former KGB officer.